At our PEI Home and School Federation board meeting this week we got a demonstration of the extent to which we limit our children's access to technology in the name of protecting them from technology and protecting ...

Gone are the days where children were expected to memorize facts and recite them at any given time. Instead, it is hoped that children will develop critical thinking skills so that they can analyze situations, think about different outcomes, and present well-reasoned conclusions. To help children develop critical thinking skills, there are some apps, tools, and resources. Here is a list of the top seven.

Blubrry is awesome. Far more than a delicious fruit rich in antioxidants or the name of what I dream Violet Beauregard would call a new tech start-up, Blubrry is the parent company of the scrumdiddlyumptious PowerPress plugin that gives WordPress audiophiles full control of their audio files.

Unlike services such as Libsyn and Soundcloud, which can link to your WordPress site, Blubrry PowerPress lets your primary interaction with your podcast be where you’re obviously most comfortable–your very own WordPress dashboard.

What is Blubrry PowerPress, Exactly?

In a nutshell, Blubrry PowerPress an all-in-one plugin that lets you upload, host, and publish a podcast entirely from your WordPress website. You don’t have to go through an external service (though you can if you want.) Everything from subscription options, a built-in player, and RSS management work right out of the box. Errr…the plugin repository....

Alphabet, number 5 on our list of the 50 Smartest Companies, thinks it can wrest the cloud computing market away from Amazon by helping companies make use of machine learning with a tool called TensorFlow.

This report extract looks at some key trends in the global education market, including opportunities for growth, the profitability of the sector, public vs. private education and new funding models, helping universities, schools and education companies to set priorities for attracting more students.

The challenge is not information storage but information processing. It's not about information itself but how to use information. The teaching of creativity, curiosity, critical thinking, analytical thinking, problem-solving, and a love of learning itself will be critical to transitioning from the industrial age to the automated age.

This publication has a twofold aim – to help students learn a language creatively whilst at the same time raising awareness of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals through bringing together a range of innovative ideas for teaching creatively and addressing these key issues. The activities include enabling students to think creatively about sustainable food and food supplies, creating energy which does not harm the environment, and collaborating with other students globally to diminish the digital divide.

It's a damning indictment of our collective resistance to truth that the point of this article still has to be restated, yet again. Amazingly, 93% of the general public and 76% of educators still erroneously believe that we should be taught in ways that match our learning styles. I assume this is so in the US - unless things have changed recently, the percentages, for teachers at least, are even worse in some other countries where the idea has been pushed harder from the top down, such as the UK and Netherlands. To be quite clear: this belief is not…

Jim Lerman: "One tiny little feature that packs an amazing punch is Voice Typing in Google Docs. This is a speech-to-text feature that is built-in to the most popular word processor in the world, and it is available to you and your students if you have a microphone in your devices."~ Thanks for the tip Jim! ~ Dennis

Jia Jiang adventures boldly into a territory so many of us fear: rejection. By seeking out rejection for 100 days -- from asking a stranger to borrow $100 to requesting a "burger refill" at a restaurant -- Jiang desensitized himself to the pain and shame that rejection often brings and, in the process, discovered that simply asking for what you want can open up possibilities where you expect to find dead ends.

Each week, we will feature Discovery Education community members using a variety of digital assets (e.g. audio files, videos, interactives), features within Discovery Education (e.g. builder tools, student center), Professional Learning Center resources, Spotlight on Strategies, and the DEN Online...

The Question Formulation Technique (QFT) is the outcome of twenty years of work in developing and, most importantly, simplifying a straightforward, rigorous process that helps all students learn how to produce their own questions, improve their questions, and strategize on how to use their questions. In the process, they develop divergent, convergent and metacognitive thinking abilities.

There is a wealth of psychology research that can help teachers to improve how they work with students – but academic studies of this kind aren’t always easy to access, or to translate into the realities of classroom practice. This series seeks to redress that, by taking a selection of studies and making sense of the important information for teachers.

Summary: Contrary to popular assumption that areas of the brain responsible for memory are fully matured by age six, researchers report the maturation process continues until the age of at least 14.

Source: Max Planck Institute.

High-resolution imaging provides new insights into the development of the human brain.

In contrast to previous assumptions, the hippocampus, a brain structure that is central to learning and memory, does not complete its maturation until adolescence. Scientists of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, the Max Planck UCL Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Ageing Research, and the University of Stirling were able to show this for the first time using high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging. The study’s findings were recently published in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS).

This tool enables teachers to build onto more traditional course book based courses and add a blended learning element. Once you have created an account you can upload PDF documents, or buy in text books from publishers or book stores and add them to courses.

Order and assign textbooks, articles, or your PDFs in Perusall. Students annotate the readings and asynchronously respond to each other's comments and questions about the readings in context. With novel data analytics, Perusall automatically generates optimal student groupings and social interactions, grades students' engagement to ensure they are prepared for class, and nudges those who need help to keep everyone on track.

Sharing your scoops to your social media accounts is a must to distribute your curated content. Not only will it drive traffic and leads through your content, but it will help show your expertise with your followers.

Integrating your curated content to your website or blog will allow you to increase your website visitors’ engagement, boost SEO and acquire new visitors. By redirecting your social media traffic to your website, Scoop.it will also help you generate more qualified traffic and leads from your curation work.

Distributing your curated content through a newsletter is a great way to nurture and engage your email subscribers will developing your traffic and visibility.
Creating engaging newsletters with your curated content is really easy.